I have never been a patient before. I joined a MoMo Mom support group and they had a list of items that they recommend to bring to the hospital. Everything on the list is not only for physical comfort, but for mental health purposes as well. Rob and I spent the whole weekend buying comfy sheets, towels, pajamas, and etc to make my almost 3 month stay in the hospital as comfortable as possible. You can't really prepare yourself for this. All the doctors and nurses were so impressed of how 'homey' my room was and they loved the smell too. I made sure to buy a diffuser at the Spa, because one thing I didn't want is the 'hospital smell'. My in-laws were nice enough to drive down from NY and stay a couple weeks to watch the house, while Rob helped me get settled into the hospital.
When I got to the hospital....I procrastinated as much as I could and made excuses of why I was going to be late. I figured once I got there, paperwork would need to be filled out and I may be waiting in the lobby for a while. NOPE!!! As soon as we walked through the door, they had my name on the list, we took a ride up to the second floor, went into a room, and THAT'S IT! No preparation, no paperwork, no tour. This room we went into, was going to be my home for almost 3 months!!!
The nurses then proceeded to give me my 1st round of steroid injections, this helps with the babies' lung maturity, in case they have any distress and needed to be delivered in the next week or two....hopefully not. The shot itself is pretty painful, but I had no choice.
The nurses put 3 monitors on my belly. One to check for contractions, and the other two for each baby. Any movement by either me or the babies would cause problems with the monitoring so the nurses had to frequently rearrange the monitors on my belly day and night. It's hard to stay asleep when they are constantly adjusting the monitors. Again....I just had to accept this was going to be my life for the next 10 weeks. In the bed, strapped on with wires, have to call to go to the bathroom, had to eat hospital food, had to call if I can't reach something, and lack of sleep.
Since Rob's parents' were watching the house/animals for us, Rob was able to stay with me a few days. Thank goodness, because I really needed him during this transition. The best news was, that this whole week the babies' heart rates were very good and the doctors say no problems so far. We would also be getting an US 3x/week to check the flow of the umbilical cord in order to determine if there was any cord compression or not.
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